Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to design a house to last 1000 years

constructionphysics.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 402 posts

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#271

Post by danans »

> But this cycle of replacement is relatively modern - medieval houses would often last for centuries,

Most people in medieval times lived much cheaper structures made of fast degrading materials like wood, mud, and thatch, not stone houses. Therefore most medieval houses did not last centuries.

People reused the much rarer stone structures for centuries because without the aid of machines, it was extremely labor intensive to build stone structures. Obviously, they were more valuable since they were more durable.

Populations and technological advancement exploded during the centuries afterward - especially after the industrial revolution - so it's not a useful comparison.

> and there are examples from around the world of buildings that have lasted for many hundreds or even thousands of years while remaining in use - The Pantheon, Aula Palatina, Brihadeeswarar Temple, Verona Area, Chartres Cathedral are a few examples.

Those are mostly houses for god[s], not people. Their function is primarily ritual, not to enable the functions of human life.

Then as now, for human existence, you need facilities to heat and cool, provide water, prepare food, and remove waste for a large number of people per square meter of building.

Modern buildings perform better at those things due to the quantum leap in precision manufactured materials, which are able to keep the elements at bay - but time and nature are constantly attacking man-made square corners and tight fitting joints and seams. Caulk fails. At some point that stuff all needs to be replaced and it represents the majority (materials and labor) of building/maintaining a house.

What might be original after 1000 years of the author's house (assuming it survives cultural change, which the author addresses), is only the structure. And a house structure that lasts 1000 years is interesting in the same way that a fossilized dinosaur skeleton is interesting - but the dinosaur's actual plumbing was lost eons ago.

The author seems to understand this because they discuss that a goal is for it to survive until the point where people want to maintain it just because it is old.

That's great, but it's not a kind of prescription for building housing at scale sustainably today.

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#272

Post by irrational »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #264
irrational wrote: post #236

Step 1. Build it on solid bedrock in a location not prone to earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, rising ocean levels, volcanoes, etc. Build it in a location unlikely to be bombed or otherwise involved in human conflict.

so... Mars?

I’m thinking some places in central Canada. Currently you would have to deal with lots of snow, but climate change will shortly sort that out.

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#273

Post by funcDropShadow »

_Adam wrote: post #210
specialist wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya. I'm very curious about this kind of stuff. And now especially "activhaus" ideas. Being a software guy, probably from envy. Ages ago, I started remodeling while my Belgian coworker (working from Belgian) started his new home construction. My house in the USA Pacific Northwest is timber framed with tar shingle roof. Coworker's house, IIRC, was block walls and ceramic roof. My house so temporary, their house built f…

If wood stays dry it will last for centuries. Of course given the climate here you'll need to maintain and eventually re-shingle your roof (In the same region and my 34 year old tar shingle roof sprung a leak a few days ago) but if you do that your house will likely last just as long as your coworker's.

Ceramic shingles are replaced after 40-50 years as well. At least in Germany.

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#274

Post by gridspy »

titanomachy wrote: post #194
avereveard wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had an unlimited budget at some point on the price scale you can just build a titanium cast for a house and pour molten rocks in, probably a basalt. what's the yield strength of igneous rocks? maybe the roof need to be arched.

Is that something that we've actually done at any kind of scale?

Well, we've done it with concrete tents [1].

It seems plausable you could begin with that kind of shelter and use that as a basis for further reinforcement.

[1] https://www.concretecanvas.com/cc-shelters/

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#275

Post by RedBeetDeadpool »

klaussilveira wrote: post #189
RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #28

Also don't build the house in Florida.

I know this is a joke, but there are several advancements in coastal engineering that are quite interesting: https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/fema_tb_2_f...

Hmm... very interesting.

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#276

Post by aspaceman »

tiborsaas wrote: post #255
djrogers wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like we are running low on examples of 1000+ years buildings ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_century_in_architecture ). These castles, cathedrals, farms, were built to last, so it's appropriate to use them as examples. This is an easy place to run in to a survivorship bias problem - pick a random 1000 year old farmhouse. How many farmhouses built exactly the same way didn't last for various reasons? I…

If you look at that list, almost all of the surviving buildings are churches or religious places. If the goal is to build something that lasts 1000 years, then you need to factor in political and utility questions as well besides fixating on materials. Your home can have perfect architecture, but if a rich person buys your land after you are gone and decides what you've had sucks, it will just get demolished and repl…

> That rarely happens with churches.

I agree. If the church didn't survive, they would just build a new one.

I imagine there lie the remains of hundreds of separate cathedrals under one. But you would never say "the church fell down". Rather, "there was an accident and renovations were required".

I see them as a Ship of Theseus, where the most long-lasting examples were determined through a lot of trial and error.

Isn't this a thing with Notre Dame? It's been a while but I remember the opening of Hunchback mentions the rebuilding right?

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#277

Post by voisin »

rsync wrote: post #98

This is a very odd design document and it makes me think this author has thought a lot about materials and buildings but not actually built anything . The steel moment frame, to someone with shallow knowledge, sounds so strong and resilient . But in fact, a rigid steel structure is more vulnerable to seismic (and even wind) loads than wooden framing which can flex and move and dampen those loads naturally. The stainl…

> I would only use steel members if the span called for wood that was too big (like a 24' span needing a 8x14 or whatever).

What about laminated timber to achieve these spans?

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#278

Post by oh_sigh »

If you want a house to be able to exist for 1000 years without human contact, you should look at neolithic burial chambers, e.g. long barrows[0], and copy their construction.

If you want a house to be able to exist for 1000 years with human contact, then the only thing you need is for the humans to care and to proactively fix problems as they happen.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_barrow#/media/File:Waylan...

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#279

Post by ggcdn »

rsync wrote: post #216
clairity wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Steel is springy. Tall steel-framed buildings and bridges routinely sway in wind, which is usually harmless to the structure but annoying to occupants." exactly, i recently mentioned my swaying-in-an-earthquake story[0], which was in a class A (steel+concrete) highrise office building. driving steel into the ground doesn't automatically mean it will rot and/or break in the first earthquake/windstorm that hits, eve…

You misunderstood my comment about steel in the ground ... I was trying to convince the OP that they don't need to worry about the corrosion since even in terrible circumstances the steel still lasts quite a while. With regard to your skyscraper experience: I'm not sure this is an apples-to-apples comparison. Skyscrapers are not made of skyscraper-height columns - they are a stack of elements that are connected every…

Rigidity is good for some things and bad for others. In seismic design, inertial forces tend to decrease as structures become more flexible (Good!). But the consequence is that things move more (Bad!) meaning that all the nonstructural things get damaged - drywall, chimney, ceilings, etc. If things move too much, they also are subject to various types of degradation - yielding, fatigue, etc.

The other structural aspect not mentioned in the above discussion is strength. You can trivially get an order of magnitude more strength than required by even the harshest of loads using steel in a small structure like this. The same cannot be said about wood. For instance, a single 3/4" A325 bolt will be able to resist about 40,000lb shear or 70,000lb tension. The entire base shear of this size of structure in a code-design earthquake would be somewhere around 4,000lb.

Re: How to design a house to last 1000 years

#280

Post by distances »

rootusrootus wrote: post #268
ramraj07 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a separate dining room if you’re building a 6 room or larger MANSION. Calling a building with a separate dining room on top of a kitchen plus informal dining room as a Regular home seems to be a stretch.

That's regional, of course. I'm talking bog-standard everyday houses in the 2500-3500sf range, no mansions.

2500sf is 232 square meters. That's three normal family city apartments by European standards. I guess houses just run bigger there but sounds quite excessive nonetheless.
Post reply on HN